THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of THE VICE PRESIDENT

Internal Transcript December 6, 2001

INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

BY KEN WALSH, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

11:33 A . M . EST

Q We're doing a cover story this week on Defense •

Secretary Rumsfeld. And I just wanted to chat with you a
bit.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The babe magnet. (Laughter.)
Q That's right. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: For the 70-year-old crowd.
Q Well, one thing we wanted to talk about a little
bit is what Secretary Rumsfeld brings to the table, as far
I as the President is concerned; what he offers that the
President doesn't get elsewhere, from other people in his
Cabinet, and other people who advise him. Is it his
experiences that are so extensive at Defense, the White
House and private business? Are there other things? How
sympatico are they, that sort of thing.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It' s. a number, of things.
Obviously, his experience counts for a lot. I mean, this is
a guy who is, you know, involved in these kinds of decisions
going back to the Nixon-Ford days, in the early '70s,
Secretary of Defense 25 years ago. I guess it's that long
ago.
But, also, somebody -- the experience is invaluable.
When you get into one of these kind of situations we're in
now, where you're actually using military force and you've
got people in combat and so forth, it helps a great deal to
have an experienced crew, and Don is a key part of that,
because he's been there before.
Second, he's -- I'm trying to think how to say this.
It's his sort of "no BS" attitude. He is, in private, just
as straightforward and aggressive as he is in public. So
you get into a policy debate or discussion, if he sees
"\g he doesn't think makes sense, he'll immediately
}

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call somebody on it. You get an options paper or a
background memo for an NSC meeting, and it's got something
in it that somebody's just -- there's an assumption that's
untested, or a set of facts that aren't really facts, he'll
immediately jump on it.
So as a participant in the process, Don is never
bashful about taking on anybody. That's a valuable trade.
He also -- I guess the third point, that sort of relates to
the last one, is in terms of his ability to be direct with
the President. Most Presidents, my experience, have real
difficulties finding people who don't trim on them.
Everybody wants a good relationship with the guy in the Oval
Office. And you need a couple of people in every
administration who are very direct and who will go to the
President and tell them exactly what they think, not what •
they think he wants to hear. And Don, clearly, is one of
those individuals in this administration.
Q Is there any example you can think of, of where
that sort of straightforwardness has made a key difference?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's -- I'm reluctant to get
into the business of specifying particular items, partly
because he's very careful, as I am, not to comment on the
advice somebody gives the President. I don't talk about
subsequently what I advise the President or comment on
others' advice. Let me think --
Q It could be just nothing on policy, just something
-- just to show how the President values his straightforward
approach, or his no-nonsense approach, or his unvarnished
advice. Really, this is just the kind of humanizing detail
that brings a story like this to life. And they're hard to
get, but I always ask. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Let me think about it.
Q Okay, please. Let me -- as far as the personal
side of Don Rumsfeld, you've known him for a long time. A
lot of people at the White House talk about that Cabinet
meeting the week of -- I guess it was the Friday after the
terrorist attacks, where he started with the prayer, and a
lot of people were very impressed with the compelling nature
of the prayer. And, yet, he's not thought of as a guy who's
particularly emotional or shows his spiritual side very
much. Is that a side of him that is not --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a very private side of him.
He rarely talks about it.
Q Did you remember that -- I don't know if you were
there for that particular --

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 THE VICE PRESIDENT: When I first went to work for
Rumsfeld, that was 1969, over 30 years ago, and he was all
of 36 years old, I guess. I was about 28, maybe. It was a
long time ago. You didn't see any of that side of Don. I
think some of that has come with the years, and maturity and
wisdom. And as I say, it's still a very private part of his
personality. But it's there to a greater extent than it was
certainly when I first went to work for him.
He was -- well, we were joking the other day. He'd
raised hell about something in a meeting in the Situation
Room. Some subject had come up, I can't remember what it
was, and he had gotten very direct and blunt and pounded on
the table a couple of times. I can remember -- after
everybody sort of sat there and listened to this, and got •
quiet. But they should have seen him 30 years ago when I
went to work for him, before he mellowed out. (Laughter.)
Q Well, as far as when you -- comparing your
experience -- well, starting with his experience at Defense,
with yours at Defense, and what Defense is like now, when he
took over this go-around there was some grumbling from
people on the Hill and other places that he was getting off
to a slow start, that he was sort of wedded to the past
Pentagon, not what's going on now. And I wonder, did that
ever strike you in any way? And I wondered, since you were
a Defense Secretary, as well, how he has adjusted to the
changed nature of the threats to the United States from when
he was there the last time, and when you were there?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, one of the things about Don,
if you look at how he has spent his time over the years,
he's always had a deep and abiding interest in this whole
national security arena. Even when he was out in the
business sector, he was from time to time either pulled back
to take on a special assignment -- Mideast envoy in the
Reagan administration, or all the way up to chairing the
Ballistic Missile Threat Commission here a year or two ago.
A long-time involvement with RAND. I mean, he spent --he
was chairman of the RAND board for years and years.
Intellectually, it's not as though a guy was there in
the '70s and walked away from it but came back 20 years
later to do the job again. He's been involved all through
this whole process, in the policy sense and the think tank
arena. And been current and his thinking has evolved over
the years, as have all of us who have been involved in the
continuing process.
In terms of the criticism that came earlier, my view
was that the people who were griping were the ones who were
\d to change; that a Secretary who comes in and starts
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000153
 asking very tough questions, as Don did, and commissioning a
lot of different papers on various aspects of our defense
establishment and strategy and force structure and so forth,
as Don did; a guy who asked Congress for base closing
authority, as Don did, this is a threatening proposition for
a lot of people inside and outside the Department.
So I never bought the criticism that somehow he was a
relic of the past. He was the guy who, and I think still
will, be the advocate of change and adaptation in the
Department, which is badly needed. And the other folks out
there, his critics were the ones who were having the
toughest time coming to grips with the need for change.
Q What should the American public know about Don
Rumsfeld as a person, .and as a public servant and as a
leader? You can take that as, sort of, one question, or
three. But, basically, I'm just looking for -- you know him
so well. People see him now as sort of the face of the
administration's war on terrorism in some ways. What should
people know about him?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let's see, I think about the
-- from the standpoint of the war, something he does very
well and that isn't always handled well in the Department,
the way he manages from an operational standpoint. A
Secretary has got a lot of responsibilities, but certainly
| one of the most important is when you do deploy the force
and send troops into combat. And that link between the
^ President, the Secretary and the CINC is crucial, that chain
of command.
And getting it right, in terms of what you expect the
CINC today, what his area of responsibility is, as
contrasted with what the civilian leadership is supposed to
provide and how the civilian leadership gets the military to
operate. Managing that interface has been botched in a lot
of administrations over the years. Don does that very well.
And, again, that comes back to experience and having spent a
lot of time thinking about how he wants to operate.
But also it's a good fit with the President. And that
ability to -- I've seen him work over the years, I watched
him closely when he worked for President Ford, for example.
And I watched him work with President Bush. And he adjusts
well upwards, in terms of figuring out how he can best serve
the President, what the President's needs are. And then
taking on these major responsibilities underneath. That's a
piece of it I've always been impressed with.
One of the lessons he taught me very early on in my
career was dealing straight with people, and the press was
\n that list. And what sometimes people take, the persona

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 of Don Rumsfeld on "Saturday Night Live" parodies is
breathtaking, which is a great -- I don't know if you saw
) that show the other night, but it was well done.
But he told me early on, he said, look, there are only
three answers. Answer number one is, I know and I'll tell
you. Answer number two is, I know and I won't tell you. Or
answer number three is, I don't know. And there's never a
question that you're going to have to deal with, with the
press that doesn't fall into one of those categories. And
the importance of dealing straight with people privately, as
well as publicly. This is not a devious guy. Although
sometimes he's accused of that, I've never seen it. He's
always been very, very straight with me, both as a boss and
as a colleague.
Q I wonder, looking at this from another
perspective, what does the nation expect of the President
during wartime? This is sort of a little broader notion
here. Does the President need different leadership skills
in wartime than in peacetime? And, if so, what are they? I
mean, you've seen President Bush, the father, operate in a
wartime situation, and now the son. But, basically, just
the idea of a President and wartime leadership.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It is different. It centers in
•x the role of Commander in Chief. A lot of what a President
I does is to exercise shared responsibility -- most of the
~?j time -- with Congress, whether it's getting a budget
approved or a major piece of legislation authorized. When
you get into the military arena and you've deployed forces
and you're having to make command decisions, in effect, as a
Commander in Chief, that's not a shared responsibility.
You know, you've got to bring the Congress along.
You've still got the important leadership responsibilities,
but it's much more everybody understands you look to the
President to make those basic, fundamental key decisions --
when to deploy, and how to deploy, and approve your overall
strategy and when to decide to use military force and to get
the mix right between military force and diplomacy and
intelligence activities.
And it's that ability -- the President is very good at
it, because partly he comes at it as, I think maybe some of
it is his business school background, think about how you
manage a complex process and have people identify -- he's
very much aware of assigning responsibility and holding
people accountable for their performance. So he often goes
to the bottom line, in terms of what he expects of people --
once we've had a session or made major decisions.

J 000155
 So he's very good at -- well, making the -- weighing
the evidence, knowing lots of time you don't have all the
information you'd like, but that's life and you've still got
to make a decision and get on with it, and not agonizing
over it. He doesn't look back and lay awake at night, I
don't think, in terms of worrying about whether or not he
got it right.
Q One other thing, since we have the news of the
week here, I wondered if you had any comments on the state
of affairs in the Mideast. This is not on Rumsfeld, but
since this is a news environment, I just wanted to just
quickly ask you, sort of, basically, your assessment of the
state of affairs there and what the U.S. can do now.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, can we on background?
Q However you want to do it.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, up until now, it's on the
record; now we're on background, administration official.
Q That's fine.
THE VICE PRESIDENT (on background): I'm very concerned
about it. I think, you know, we're down to the point where
if you go back and look at how we got here, the basic
proposition was that Arafat would renounce violence; that
the PLO would recognize the right of Israelis to exist, end
the effort to push Israel into the sea and, in return for
that, there would be negotiations, land for peace, 2-4-2 and
3-3-8, et cetera.
Now we're to the point where a very important
ingredient of that has been lost and that's the renunciation
of violence. And it strikes me that there are two possible -
ways to interpret what's going on. Now, either Arafat is
unwilling to control the Hamas, in this case, the terrorist
organization -- or he's unable to do it, lacks the authority
and the ability to crackdown on his side. And until that
problem gets solved and there's some way found to put an end
to suicide bomber attacks against civilians, there will be
no peace, no progress.
Q Right. Okay. And the last thing is assessing the
progress of the war against terrorism, in general, getting
back to this Rumsfeld notion. But, basically, how it's
going, what you see as the next phase here.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it's going very
well.
Q Are we back on the record?
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 THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure, you can go back on the
record, right.
I think it's going very well. There is still a lot to
do, but if we think about where we were a couple of months
ago, we've come a long way. The Taliban is pretty much
history. There are reports running this morning -- I
haven't confirmed them yet -- but that Mullah Omar has
agreed to surrender Kandahar tomorrow. This just ran on the
ticker, I don't have independent -- or other confirmation.
But we've still got work to do in terms of rounding up
the al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden,
clearly. And that may take some considerable period of
time, but we'll keep at it until we get it done.
Beyond that, once you move beyond Afghanistan --
keeping in mind there is still a major task there with
respect to rebuilding the government and putting something
in its place -- the al Qaeda network worldwide is still very
formidable. We've still got 50 or 60 countries out there
that may have cells in them. There's one report that
perhaps as many as 60,000 or 70,000 people may have passed
through those training camps over the years . Seems like a
lot. But, clearly, there are people loose out there in the
world who have been trained and are dedicated to the
proposition of trying to kill Americans.
And we've got a lot of work to do to round up and
eliminate those cells. There is still going to be a major
agenda force going forward, in terms of trying to make the
United States a harder target. A lot of work to be done
there, yet, and, of course, Tom Ridge is off and running on
that. But that's never gong to be enough. You've still, in
the final" analysis, got to go get the "bad guys and eliminate
the terrorists, themselves. And we'll be about that for
some considerable time to come.
Q Would you address the Iraq question?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, Iraq is -- you know, we all
know what Saddam Hussein is like. He's got a track record
of having harbored terrorists in the past -- Abu Nidal, for
example, for a long time operated out of Baghdad. He has a
track record of developing, possessing weapons of mass
destruction. He has a track record, unlike just about
anybody else of actually using them, he used chemical agents
against both the Kurds and also used them pretty widely at
the tail end of the war with Iran, back in the late '80s.
And three years ago he kicked out the U.N. inspectors.
So he's had three years during which he had free reign to

000157
 continue to try to acquire nuclear weapons, which we know
he's worked on, as well as biological and chemical weapons
at the same time. So he's obviously someone who bears
watching.
The right way to proceed out there, that's clearly a
decision the President is going to have to make down the
road. It's important, I think, not to focus solely on Iraq.
There are a number of other countries, as well, that have
harbored terrorists in the past. I think our success_in
Afghanistan is going to give a number of those countries
pause, they'll understand when they think about what
happened to the Taliban, that the President is deadly
serious when he says we'll hold states accountable if they,
in fact, provide sanctuary and safe harbor for terrorists.
Q And the last thing is on the military tribunals
issue. I know John Ashcroft is testifying now about that
before Leahy's committee. What is it that people don't
understand about this that's causing such a fuss? I presume
you think that this is being distorted in some way by the
critics, but --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think there's been a bit of a
hysterical reaction out there to it. And it's unjustified.
Part of it, I think, is there's a — in the press, and I
don't mean to beat up on the press, but there's sort of a
~| visceral reaction anytime somebody says "secret."

Q Right.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: But if you're in the intelligence
world, secrecy is a very important thing. If you're in the
national security business, it is, too. And military
tribunal is a valuable option for the President. It's being
done in a very careful way, that his order specifies that
these people have full and fair trials, that they'll have
access to competent counsel, that they'll be treated
humanely. We apply it only to non-citizens, and he's going
to personally make the decision each time anybody is sent
over through that channel and its target against al Qaeda.
And people who are obviously dedicated to killing Americans.

There's a lot of historical precedent for this. This

is not some sort of far reach or new departure. Our history
is replete with examples of Presidents in prior
circumstances where this kind of thing is necessary.
I think at bottom, one of the strongest arguments for
this approach is the fact that to get to conviction we have
sometimes in the past, I think, compromised intelligence
sources and missives. And Osama bin Laden has gone to
school on us, he can look at those earlier trials to the
s
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World Trade Center bombing in '93 and they learn how we
operate and they then adapt their procedures and processes
so we no longer have access to information we would have had
access to if they hadn't been able to figure out what we
were doing and how we were doing it.
And so protecting our intelligence sources and methods
when, oftentimes, that may be the only place we get
information about how these guys operate and whether or not
a particular individual has tried to launch a terror attack
against the United States is a key consideration.
Q Great. Well, thank you so much, and maybe I'll
see you out at Cheyenne Frontier Days one of these days.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, sir, look forward to .
it.
Q Thank you very much.
END 11:53 A.M.
EST

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